Tag: tattoos

Padma Mehta used to work for The Man. That is, WalWa, one of the Big Three megacorporations that own most of Occupied Space. She was good at her job, too, despite the shabby treatment she often got. Then Bad Things happened, and Padma Breached, breaking her indenture contract to join the Union on Santee.

Now Padma’s a Ward Head for the Union in Brushhead, one of the neighborhoods in Santee Landing. But now she has other plans–the owner of the distillery that makes Padma’s favorite rum “Old Windswept” is retiring, and Padma wants to buy that distillery to make sure the sanity-restoring drink remains made just the right way. But to do that, Padma must fill job Slots for the Union, and that means finding new Breaches to take those Slots. When a mining ship disaster kills the discontented workers she was counting on, Padma is forced to accept a deal with small time con artist Vytai Bloombeck, who knows where some other Breaches are coming to the planet.

Except, of course, that there are five Breaches (six if you count the corpse), not forty, and rival ward head Evanrute Saarien is determined to steal even those to add to his own credit with the Union. And things just continue to go downhill from there, with disgruntled Union workers, corporate assassins and a deadly cane blight all making Padma’s life even more awful than she perhaps deserves. The only people that might be on Padma’s side are rogue cab driver Jilly and recently Breached lawyer Banks, and that might just be because they don’t know her well enough.

This science fiction novel is set in a future that’s not the worst possible outcome, but is full of broken systems. Yes, being a corporate Indenture means that you get many benefits, like the “pai” (never actually explained but probably short for “personal assistant implant”) hooked up to your optic nerve to allow wireless communication among other neat features. But the Big Three tend to cheap out on the actual quality of the benefits, and every upgrade comes with more time on your indenture.

The Union is no bed of roses either; there’s a bunch of low-level job Slots that need filling, and rookies go straight into things like sewer cleaning and hull scraping, regardless of actual skill set. Getting into better Slots takes the ability to convince the Union you’re worthy, and new Breaches coming in to take the lowest Slots. (Bloombeck’s been stuck in the sewers for decades because no one likes him enough to find him a better Slot.)

Padma has a lot of flaws, some of which are related to the mental illness that she got during her service to WalWa. Old Windswept is the only effective treatment she’s found for The Fear, so that’s her top priority. Unfortunately, Santee has fallen off the main trade routes, so fewer ships are coming for the cane, molasses and galaxy’s best rum, and thus fewer Breaches to feed her kitty and let her workers rise in the ranks. As a result of her worries about this, Padma has not kept her ear to the ground about various developing situations around the colony, and that comes back to bite her repeatedly.

Something else that bites Padma is her habit of assuming people she meets have always been what they are when she meets them. More than one person has a secret past that has bearing on current events. Other people turn out to be exactly what Padma thinks they are, which may be worse.

Once the ball gets rolling, it’s pretty much non-stop peril for Padma and her crew, only getting breathing space to set up more peril. There’s a fair amount of violence, but more disturbing in its implications than graphic.

There’s no romance subplot, but Padma does have plot-relevant casual sex towards the beginning of the story. Perhaps the happiest part of the ending is that Padma’s a better person than she was before everything happened, even if she didn’t exactly get what she wanted.

Other characters develop depth of personality only by what Padma sees them do, as makes sense in a first-person narrative. Banks is far more complex than he initially seems, while Jilly is young and rather callow, but learning fast. Other characters…well, that’d be spoilers.

At least one scene is designed to be in the potential movie version, as lampshaded by the characters in it talking about the movies they’ve seen and whether this is actually something that could happen in real life.

I enjoyed the book and the characters–it’s not often a battle-scarred, middle-aged woman of South Asian descent is the protagonist in an action novel. (However, the treatment of her mental illness may not be fully accurate; I am not qualified to tell.)

Frederick Dannay, who along with Manfred B. Lee wrote the Ellery Queen mystery stories, was asked by Mercury Press to be the editor of a new magazine that would print a higher class of detective stories than the general run of pulps, with the first issue of EQMM coming out in 1941. At first it was a reprint magazine, featuring classic tales by writers like Agatha Christie and Cornell Woolrich. But by the seventh issue, new stories began to appear, and one, “The Bow Street Runner” by Samuel Duff, was that author’s first professional sale.

Over the years, Mr. Dannay sought out new writers to appear in “The Department of First Stories”, many of whom went on to great success. His successors have carried on that tradition, and as part of the magazine’s 75th Anniversary celebration, the July issue #898 features new stories by authors who got their start in EQMM.

“The Staff of Asclepius” by Stephen Saylor features his Roman sleuth Gordianus the Finder. This one is set in his youth, when Gordianus and a friend were on a trip to see the Seven Wonders of the World. They winter in Rhodes, home of the fabled Colossus. During their enforced idleness, Gordianus learns of a shipping magnate named Rhosander who has suffered several bouts of illness, then miraculously recovered due to wacky cures he dreamed of in the temple of the healing god. Perhaps these episodes are the symptoms of some underlying illness…but they could also be slow poison. The illustration has male rear nudity, which is germane to the story.

“Department of First Stories: A History” by Marvin Lachman reveals the material I cited at the beginning of this review, but in much, much more detail, including a list of some of the most famous writers to debut in the magazine and their accomplishments.

“The Granite Kitchen” by David Morrell is a monologue to a real estate agent by a woman selling her home. She’s obsessed with making her homes just so, always moving on to a bigger project once she has it right. And either she has the unluckiest bunch of family and friends I have ever seen, or…. Chilling.

“Blog Bytes” by Bill Crider is a regular column of mystery-related internet sites; this time focusing on fans of the Ellery Queen stories.

“The Jury Box” by Steve Steinbock is a more traditional book review column. Among other works, this month it mentions several novels starring famous writers as the detectives, including A Riot Most Uncouth by Daniel Friedman, which I reviewed a while back.

“Get Them Out” by Nancy Pickard has a homeless man kicked out of a shelter for making a disturbance. The new janitor at an apartment building offers him a place to sleep in the basement, but his motives may not be altruistic. Ends on an ambiguous note.

“Black Monday” by John H. Sherman is a first story. Howard, a lab technician at a hospital, has been having problems with alcohol and painkiller addiction, and has missing time. His dreams of swimming have gone dark, and he can’t remember what he did last night.

“The Red Tattoo” by Percy Spurlark Parker is a noirish tale featuring Las Vegas private eye Trevor Oaks. He’s hired to find a man’s missing identical twin; the only clue is that the twin was seen in LV with a woman who had a red tattoo.

“The Hangman” by David Dean is the story of a cops-and-robbers game gone south, and the years later sequel. Depressing.

“Flight” by Trina Corey is set in a nursing home during the Vietnam War era (I suspect to avoid easy fixes by technology.) Rachel is crippled by multiple sclerosis, unable to speak or write. Perhaps that’s why a murderer has taken to coming into her room at night to gloat, knowing that she can’t tell anyone. But Rachel still has her mind, and there’s a young nurse that hasn’t lost her ability to care yet, and maybe there’s a way to stop the killer.

“The Man from Away” by Brendan DuBois takes place in New Hampshire and Boston. People tell Amos Wilson he’s too gullible, that his estranged wife is a gold digger he’s better off without. But when she is accidentally killed by tourists who then vanish, Amos feels obligated to do something about it. He may be long-suffering, but he’s not stupid. Satisfying.

“Consuming Passion” by Martin Edwards is about two old friends, one a master chef, the other a restaurant critic, having dinner together. It does not end well.

“The Peter Rabbit Killers” by Laura Benedict closes out the issue with a little girl whose mother has an obsession with cleanliness, and a neighbor girl who is bullying and not at all clean. Another creepy tale.

Overall, a strong issue with many fine stories. I liked “Flight” the best, while “Black Monday” and “The Hangman” were less well done. This issue is certainly worth picking up while the anniversary celebration is still on.

It’s finally out! To recap for newer readers, the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is five students at a Buddhist college that each have skills or talents related to the dead. They form a small firm that fulfills the last requests of corpses, resulting in creepy yet funny stories often focused around odd bits of Japanese culture.

This volume has three stories; the first has our heroes going up against a fake Kurosagi team of corpse disposal workers who are actually making a profit. It unfolds into a conspiracy involving a completely unnecessary dam project that has been claiming lives for three generations. The story also introduces a mysterious man named Nishi who manipulates social media and may communicate with the dead via smartphone app.

The second story is a one-shot breather about an Americanized cartoon version of the series, where the boys are all pizza delivery workers (with special talents) who wind up employed by the FBI’s Black Heron division identifying corpses that died in bizarre circumstances. There are interesting touches, like making one of the delivery guys a former rescue worker who discovered his powers on 9/11, and the diminutive embalmer an actual child prodigy. But it would never fly as an actual American cartoon due to the morbid bits. (At the end we learn it’s a bootleg DVD Numata picked up…along with a leather jacket with a really cool design…which turns out to be made by the bad guys in the cartoon!)

And the volume wraps up with another political story, as a museum of execution devices is abruptly closed by the government agency that controls it just before an investigation into its funding is about to take place. It seems that more than one person is losing their head over bureaucracy. The villain uses a gender-based slur.

As usual, the art and writing are excellent, with the “cartoon” section allowing the artist (and assistants) to show off some range. There’s an extensive endnotes section with all the cultural references and in-jokes, which Kurosagi is rich with. It’s been about two years since the last volume due to undeservedly poor sales; the problem is that this series, while of superior quality, is very niche in its appeal. Dark Horse will be releasing the early volumes in “omnibus” editions, so I urge readers to purchase those to increase the chances we’ll see volume 15 this decade.

This particular volume doesn’t have any appreciable nudity, but there is some nasty violence and dismembered corpses, so the mature readers warning still applies.